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I initially wanted an S13 coupe. The beautiful body lines of old cars always demanded my attention. They never had to be the most expensive cars, but diamonds in the rough, so to speak. I was discussing back and forth with a local importer in hopes of finally owning one after years of wanting an s-chassis. Things fell through and I ended up pretty gutted about the whole ordeal.

With a recently acquired job, I knew I needed a reliable car for work. I could have just picked up anything cheap but I figured if I had to get a car for work, I’d want something that checked all the boxes. Fun to drive, vast modification market, compact interior, and Japanese. Enter the FR-S, the “new s-chassis”. This is in no way to say one is better than the other, because it isn’t. But what it is, is a new chassis for enthusiasts to delve into and a chassis without something very important. Rust. A good majority of the s-chassis’ local to me were a pretty big victim of the dreaded “drift tax” and rust so, I decided from the start to not pursue anything local as I not only wanted a car to enjoy, I wanted a car that would be reliable enough from the get go and one without hidden rust. I’m not sure what my end game will be with this since it is my daily driver for now, but I’m sure the journey ahead will be more fruitful than any sort of end goal with this car.

The car itself is not only lacking in power in general but it also suffers from a severe torque dip in the 3.5k-5k RPM range, but learning to drive a slow car fast is extremely satisfying. It’s what I imagine driving my Rabbit will be, actually. Mathematically, all you really need is a good power to weight ratio to get the most out of your chassis. Choosing lighter components, gutting the car, etc are all good ways to achieve this. For the time being…I’ll have to cope with getting overtaken by majority of the cars on the road. Including the Toyota Prius.